AICS member John Warren of Precision Design Technology Ltd presented his new approach to software specification, where you can have both precision and profit to your advantage. Too many projects fail or are less successful than they might be; these failures are expensive and disruptive to the client. His approach is to reason about the specification, showing that it is consistent and correct before building begins. If the specification is precise, we can automate the reasoning processes. While precise specification may take a little longer, its benefit is automation of the remainder of the project lifecycle. John presented the case for precision and automated reasoning, including a demonstration, and showed that this supports an estimated order of magnitude profit increase, systems with provably correct properties, much faster delivery and enhanced system quality.

A full summary of the presentation and associated documents are in the members' area of this website.

After the presentation there was a finger buffet and discussions continued for a further two hours.